Recently, I hooked up with Brian Berch, President of B & T Construction headquartered in Pearl, Mississippi, on a job site in Granada, Mississippi. Have you ever noticed that there are some folks who, whatever they do, find their niche and do it right? Brian is one of those people!
He started to work at 18 years old for Mississippi Valley Gas and has stayed in the industry all these years. He began working as a contractor in 1994, burying utility lines for telephone, cable, and even power lines for a while. In 2007, he started working as a contractor for Atmos and says, “Since coming to work as a contractor for Atmos, I haven’t worried about having work to do.”
B & T Construction is a big believer in vacuum excavation. When asked why, he said, “We do a lot of directional drilling, and the vac trailer is great for cleaning up mud. But with so many utilities in the ground, especially in some of the tight corridors we work in, trying to expose a utility line without vacuum excavation is risking damaging another utility, and that is not why we are out here.”
When asked about the changes he’s seen, Brian said, “There have been a lot of changes, and most of them for the good. Regulations, Operator Qualifications (OQ), 811 laws, expectations of the company and the cities and counties we work in. That’s the thing that contractors must deal with every day, you’ve got to stay up with the changes or go to the house.”
When questioned about the timeliness of locates, he shrugged and said, “It just depends on what area you’re working in. If we are working on a big project, we’re rolling. And I know it is hard for the locators to stay up with us. If they are late, we just call them and give them a chance to do their job before we file a complaint. They are running hard, too, and we’ll have to work with them again. In my opinion, it’s always better to try to work together if you can, and that’s what we try to do.”
Every job has its share of challenges and excavators are not exempt. Brian said that keeping employees from congregating around one man working in a ditch was a challenge. A project that needed to be completed on schedule required every employee to do their job all the time and not watch someone else do theirs. Dealing with the public can be tricky. It is not unusual to have a homeowner walk out to question why we’re here or even to start videoing our work. He said, “I just tell our guys to do our jobs right and everything will be okay.”
He goes on to say that permits have become a major issue for the excavator. They have become so restrictive primarily as a result of some bad actors working in their towns, but again, it is part of the changes in the industry that we were talking about earlier.
Given all the changes and challenges you face daily, would you do this all over again? He thought for a moment and said, “Absolutely! It’s been a good life and I’ve made a pretty good living. I think for the most part, it’s good because we’ve committed to doing things right. I’m going to follow the law. I attend the Damage Prevention Summit to stay up with the changes and I can deal with any of it, as long as everybody else does their job.”
He said the problems are typically not the law changes, even if he doesn’t completely agree with them. The frustrations are the result of someone not able or willing to do their job, and it impacts everyone else on the job. He concluded, “But we have to work through those frustrations to be successful.”
I told Brian that I’d heard some amazing compliments about the quality of work performed by B & T Construction and about him specifically, he paused and said, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the comments, but I’m not extra-special, just doing my job, and that’s exactly what I’m supposed to do.”
He thought about what he said, nodded his head, looked me in the eye and said, “That’s who I want to be, the guy who did what he was supposed to do.”